Getting shot of the mortgage sooner than 2049!

Bluegreen143

Thank you @angela110660! Glad to hear there’s another fan of YMOYL on here 🙂

Today was another standard but pleasant day. Managed to get the kitchen done and clean washing away while listening to a town hall update meeting on Teams (the kind you just listen to rather than participate in!). 

It was another sunny, beautiful but very cold day. Poor Bambi struggles with the cold and each morning this week has been teary by the time she’s dropped off at nursery 😢 not because she doesn’t want to go, she starts crying because they take too long to answer the door and she is just desperate to get in and warm up! 

By the afternoon pick up it’s a couple of degrees warmer and she doesn’t complain on the way home, luckily, in fact rather the opposite - I get pestered to go to the playpark. 

We did go today, and had a very quick stop at the spot overlooking the canal. It’s so beautiful there, with the one issue being it is just overloaded with litter like most beauty spots in Glasgow are 😡 Monkey is dying to go litter picking again so I’ll take them once it’s warmer.

Dinner was beef chilli from the freezer, with rice, tortilla chips, cheese and some chopped jalapeños for the adults. 

Frugal wins

1. Walked everywhere (hey, I deserve the credit even if it does happen every day!)

2. Saw that Glasses Direct were doing their MSE promotion. I’ve had a prescription waiting for 11 months to get a good promotion 🙈 so straight away ordered a pair of glasses and a pair of prescription sunglasses, £29 all in for both which I’m happy with.

3. Ate leftover pasta for lunch and the aforementioned freezer chilli for dinner.

4. Kept the heating off til I picked up the kids again. I found a great pair of fluffy lined slipper socks yesterday, that I got for Christmas but hadn’t work yet, and they are making a big difference. 

5. We had a small leak from the boiler (water, not gas) and Red fixed it today for the princely sum of £6.58 in parts 🙌🏼

6. Red also made four beautiful shelves for the playroom after I asked for some to display Lego models on! He’s not put them up yet but has made them all (joining several thin pieces of wood together to make deep shelves as he didn’t have wide pieces to hand) and made wooden brackets to hold the shelves too. Cost = £0

Spending

£6.58 Screwfix
Small part for boiler repair 

£29 Glasses Direct
Glasses and prescription sunglasses for me

Bluegreen143

Just popping on for a quick update - Friday I went to Tesco, did some housework and played with Bambi, and had one of Monkey’s friends round for a quick playdate after school. 

We went to MIL’s for her birthday which was expensive, as we had to pay for taxis and a takeaway, but I think she really appreciated having everyone round (brother in law and his family were there too). 

MIL moved into a sheltered housing flat last year and it’s a great facility. She’s totally independent but they have a lovely community and run coffee mornings and groups all the time. While her flat is small, they have a big dining room downstairs which residents can book out for hosting people, so that’s what she did. They also have B&B rooms on site for family members to book and stay when visiting, at only £17 a night, as the flats are too small to have overnight guests.

So far today I’ve taken Monkey to football, then both kids to the library. My parents popped over too and brought us a chiminea they don’t want, as ours broke last year 😁

Have been working on a finance tracking spreadsheet which I’m really pleased with 😁 will share details from it at the end of each month. 

Spending update

£1.80 Bus fare

£6 Kids’ pocket money

£13.99 Boots
Over the counter medication 

£47.50 Takeaway
Our share of a takeaway to celebrate MIL’s birthday - her choice of birthday activity 

£36 Taxis
Taxi to MIL’s and back, she doesn’t live nearby 

£27.79 Tesco
£2.50 Household; £25.29 Groceries

Bluegreen143

Just posted on the grocery challenge but I’ll reiterate here, I’m really pleased with this month’s grocery figures and cautiously hopeful I’ll stay under target this month 🤞🏼😁

Current totals:

Food - £264.19 
Household - £54.08

Regular readers will be aware (the shame!) that I’ve been known to spend up to and even over £600(!) on the combined total in one month. So this is really good for me. 

I do still have two main shops to do this month, as they’re delivered on Mondays, but I’m planning to spend no more than £60 on each and £30 max on Friday’s top up shop 🤞🏼which means I’ll hopefully stay under my target £500.

Genuinely not sure I can reduce much more in future months though! I’m almost out of tins and need  to restock on tuna, tomatoes, coconut milk etc.

Bluegreen143

Just read back a bit of my old diary from 2020. I only had about £10 in my emergency fund, not enough saved for Christmas and a small amount of debt… it’s a good reminder that while my finances aren’t perfect, we’ve definitely made some decent progress in the last couple of years.

We now have over £5,000 in savings which is comforting (though it will decrease a bit when we get the car back and have to pay the garage!!).

Also eye opening to note, that the first month of my old diary, our family income was around £1,750. No wonder we were completely skint 🙈😂 though, it does make one realise how much prices have risen. We definitely couldn’t manage on that now. (For comparison, our total income this month is £4,040!!).

I did have naive aspirations of continuing to live off one income and save mine (after the cost of childcare which we had to pay for at the time) once I started to work, but clearly I did not foresee the level of inflation we have…

Baileys_Babe

I'm not sure how it happened but we used our last can of tuna earlier in the week, this is something that we always have in stock. I rectified the situation yesterday by stocking up on some cupboard staples tuna, baked beans, tinned tomatoes and wholemeal pasta as I noticed we would soon have more gaps.

Your finances have changed a lot in the last couple of years. As well as having savings and being better prepared for Christmas and birthdays you have also had the extension built which will be a boon to the 4 of you.

Bluegreen143

@Baileys_Babe I smiled to myself when I used the last tin of tuna today. My mum used to have a serious hoarding situation with tinned tuna and always had about 15 tins at hand for fear of running out 😂 even though my stepdad doesn’t like it (though the ladies of the family all do). I think it harks back to when she had my sister and I and was a single mum, unemployed and on benefits. She had a lot of clever ways in the kitchen to make the £ stretch and most of them involved replacing expensive meat with a tin of tuna or corned beef 😆 tuna curry, tuna lasagne, tuna bolognaise, tuna fish pie… you get the drift! I don’t think that either tuna or corned beef are as cheap now comparatively as they were.

Red likes tuna sandwiches and cold tuna mayo pasta salad but won’t eat tuna in hot dishes so sadly it’s not something I do, though I rather liked many of the tuna concoctions 😂 my children like tuna too so would probably eat them. When I make mac & cheese I put tuna in a bowl on the side for me and the children to mix in, as my mum always added tuna (and broccoli) to mac & cheese and it’s still the way I like it best 🙈 my sister used to request that one every year for her birthday even though we ate it regularly anyway 😂

Baileys_Babe

Your sister's birthday meal request must have pleased your Mum no end.

I think you are right the cost of corned beef and tinned tuna are not as cheap an alternative as they once were.

My parents and sister don't like tuna so I never ate it as a child unless I was visiting someone. OH, and my children are like Red and enjoy cold tuna but not hot. I occasionally add tuna to my homemade pizza as we each top our own to suit our tastes.

QueenJess

You have made impressive financial progress 👏 and I’m sure you feel much better for it.

Sarahwithlove

Thats crazy that your income has doubled since the start. You've been doing so well and have a good amount of savings behind you. I like to every now and then do a new SOA for myself. I don't post it but helps me to see where my money is going. 

KajiKita

One thing I keep meaning to do is a financial summary of my net worth between 1st January 2022 and 1st January 2023 - I have a feeling there will be more shift than I can ‘see’ just in my savings iyswim.

Well done on the grocery challenge. I was aiming to be less than £500 too and it looks like I’ve done it too 😊

KK